Principals’ Leadership Moves to Implement a Discipline-Specific Instructional Improvement Policy

Abstract

Discipline-specific instructional improvement policies require teachers to implement new teaching and collaborative practices. What kinds of leadership moves do principals make to support enactment of new practices? Drawing on leadership theories to examine principals’ leadership actions, data come from a qualitative study of three elementary school principals leading implementation of an ambitious mathematics teaching policy. We found that principals used instructional, facilitative, and positional moves across school settings to support teachers’ enactment. These findings add depth to current conceptions of discipline-specific instructional leadership and raise questions about how principals might make strategic moves based on available expertise and resources.